Official blog of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Pennsylvania

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

One more for the "restricting access to info" file

OK. Not only are newly-declassified documents becoming increasingly rare under this administration, but...

"WASHINGTON, April 17 — The National Archives signed a secret agreement in 2001 with the Central Intelligence Agency permitting the spy agency to withdraw from public access records it considered to have been improperly declassified, the head of the archives, Allen Weinstein, disclosed on Monday...

The disclosure of the secret agreements provides at least a partial explanation for the removal since 1999 of more than 55,000 pages of historical documents from access to researchers at the archives. The removal of documents, including many dating to the 1950's, was discovered by a group of historians this year and reported by The New York Times in February."

But, wait...

"Mr. Weinstein, who began work as archivist of the United States last year, said he learned of the agreement with the C.I.A. on Thursday and was putting a stop to such secret reclassification arrangements, which he described as incompatible with the mission of the archives."

Take that, CIA!

The article then says that Mr. Weinstein's predecessor was "shocked" to hear that the secret agreement was signed during his tenure as head of the Archives. An agreement so secret that the Archives doesn't even know about it? I'm curious to know how these 55,000 pages somehow left the building without his knowledge. I guess the CIA has its methods...Amy Laura in Philly